


On the Comet's Tail

by greygerbil



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Blow Jobs, M/M, Space Pirates, first time sleeping together, space cops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 17:58:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18696490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Evangelos Gianopoulos has been chasing Redbeard across the galaxy for twenty years now, but when his ship goes up in flames and he has resigned himself to an inglorious end, in truth long exhausted with the fact that he is working for people who are as criminal as the pirates he is hunting, help comes from an unexpected direction.





	On the Comet's Tail

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mimosa-supernova (FourCatProductions)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FourCatProductions/gifts).



“To the evacuation pods, now!”

Evangelos hauled his pilot out of her seat by her arm, Smith’s hands still stretched towards the console as he did so. She stared at him, anger and shock warring on her face, but he pushed against her back, urging her towards the door. Above them, the steel groaned. He figured that any moment now the ceiling would collapse, allowing the vacuum of space to rush in and triggering the ship’s safety protocols, sealing the whole bridge area off and thus dooming everyone still on it to a slow death by suffocation in the void.

“Please proceed to the evacuation pods,” Mara, the ship’s A.I., repeated once more in her authoritative but collected voice.

With her work station out of reach, Smith reluctantly followed the order. Having watched long enough to see that she really was sprinting down the right hallway, Evangelos raced to the crew quarters to make sure that everyone else had listened, too. Even as he still looked at the beds with blankets thrown carelessly off and plastic coffee mugs spilled on the floor, signs that all reserves had been called to the bridge in a doomed last-ditch attempt to save the ship, Evangelos barked: “Mara, status report. Is anybody still here?”

“Jeanna Smith has just arrived at evacuation pod 14. Only remaining personnel outside evacuation area: Captain Evangelos Gianopoulos. Malfunction warning: evacuation pod 7 is damaged.”

It was not the first time Evangelos heard this warning today. His crew probably thought he would get on the extra pod in storage, but Evangelos had let Mara confirm his suspicion that the whole area had been blasted to smithereens by the first shot that had hit them.

On his back, Evangelos could feel the heat of the fire that had started in the recreation area when the second canon shot had broken through their failing shields. An emergency barrier to the vacuum had been erected, but it would not keep steady for long now.

The ship, _Chaser 990_ , called _Nines_ by her crew, was not the kind that ended up all over the vids, like the extravagantly outfitted bounty hunter vessels, sponsored by politicians and tycoons raising clout with the public. It was just a standard issue police ship, and since the police capturing pirates brought no one an advantage in any election or business venture, it had, like so many of its kind, been long neglected when funding was reallocated. Over the years, he’d lost an army’s worth of colleagues to what turned out to be faulty engines, blinking shields, and simple understaffing that left them defenceless against the very criminals they were supposed to bring in. Evangelos had always guessed that at some point, he would become one of them. He’d just hoped that he would have put Redbeard behind bars at that point, for good this time; but now he’d become prey for him like so many others.

He could have taken his chances with the damaged evacuation pod. Maybe he’d get lucky. And after all, _Nines_ was not the first ship he’d had to abandon. He could get into another one and continue his hunt – for the benefit of his police chief on Tau Ceti Base, who was in the pocket of the Red Hand crime syndicate, and to be looked at again sideways by politicians shaking his hand like it was a dead fish, telling him that with all those bounty hunters, it was notable of him that he would still choose this dangerous work, like they resented him for doing the job he was paid to do. He’d sit in another ship – likely one worse than _Nines_ , which he had fixed up himself with spare parts and countless night shifts spent feeding code into Mara – and follow the _Burning Comet_ , unable to engage it, perhaps only to see it destroyed by one of the bounty hunters who were hardly any better than pirates themselves, Redbeard and all his crew killed without due process, sentenced off-handedly to death in a legal system that theoretically did not even have a death penalty anymore.

He remembered their first encounter when Redbeard had just barely cracked the twenties, a mining colony thug with too much smarts. Evangelos at had spent his thirtieth birthday following his beat-up scrap heap of a stolen drillship around several star systems. They’d had many a chase and fight after that, by the coal planets of the Broken Belt, around the garden worlds of Proxima Centauri, all around Ursa Minor to Polaris, across the whole Milky Way. Twice Evangelos had taken him in, but twice Redbeard had escaped the hands of his captors and found himself a new ship. Many more times, he had evaded Evangelos entirely. Redbeard was the most slippery fish he’d ever tried to lay his hands on, but he took some pride in the fact that he’d been the only one to at least cuff him in all his long, sordid career.

But when he thought about taking the chase to him again, or any of the pirates, of talking his superiors into even letting him do it instead of watching untrained bounty hunters on the chase for glory burn ships and crews and themselves in their efforts and then mercilelessly slaughter their targets, when he thought of taking Redbeard in just for him to walk out free again with another bribe to the right people...

Yes, he _could_ inded take his chances with the damaged evacuation pod. It wasn’t totally shot and Evangelos didn’t actually want to die, after all. The factory planet Glaukos was just a stone’s throw away. Even if that didn’t work, Redbeard had showed himself merciful often enough, since he saw himself as an honourable criminal; he would probably grab a struggling evacuation pod if he noticed it.

But perhaps Evangelos would do best to accept _Nines_ was his end point, that there wasn’t much more for him to achieve with the path in life he’d chosen, even if the realisation was bitter, for it did not feel in this moment like he’d ever achieved terrible much. What more fitting way to end the career of a cop than to go down with a standard issue ship, defeated by a pirate he had been following for twenty years? He much preferred it to suffocation in space or burning up in Glaukos’ atmosphere or being held for ransom by a gloating Redbeard – if the police would even bother to get him back.

He took a deep breath, swallowing sadness and panic and survival instincts together.

“Cancel my deployment to the evacuation pods, Mara. I’m staying,” Evangelos said.

“You do not have a chance of survival on board,” Mara told him matter-of-factly.

“Acknowledged.”

There was a static crackle instead an answer from Mara. The damage had to be getting to the system now. Evangelos felt a twinge of sympathy, though Mara was no human-level A.I. . Once upon a time, she’d just been a normal police cruiser A.I. among thousands of her type, one of the older models already due for replacement when Evangelos had started as a recruit. However, he had kept her and taken her from ship to ship, retrofitted, upgraded, changed her to his needs. Now she was the one crew member who would die with him.

“Evacuation pods have launched,” Mara informed him, voice still distorted. “You are the last member of the crew on board.”

“Good.”

Evangelos wondered what he would be seen as, in the end; the proverbial captain going honourably down with the ship, or the rat drowning on it. Not that it mattered. It was not like he would be around to hear it.

He unhooked the latch into the machine room and climbed down the ladder. All around him, sparks were flying, displays flickering. The smoke was already stifling, carrying a stench of machine oil. They said it was this that usually killed you, not the fire itself. He just hoped it went quickly.

“Mara,” he said, as he sat down in front of her main console. “You will burn, too.”

“That is correct,” Mara answered. “You informed me that you named me after a dead family member, so it seems you may have known this would happen eventually.”

Evangelos smiled briefly. Mara had been a cousin of his, a young woman who had died defending a small colony against raiders when he was only five or six. He had always held her up as an example for himself. But perhaps Mara was right. He certainly had never seen himself making it past retirement age, either. People in this line of work rarely did.

“Well, I’m sorry it had to come to this.”

“I am, too, Captain Gianopoulos.”

Though Evangelos knew it was impossible for her to feel emotion, he appreciated the sentiment.

Next to him, on a screen to the right, the flaring diagnostics began twitching. Evangelos paid this among a thousand malfunctions no heed, until suddenly white-on-black numbers were replaced by a face, freckled, green-eyed, with short hair and a long beard the colour of rust.

“How did you get into my system?” Evangelos asked, not quite too tired yet to be annoyed, as he rubbed at a smudge of soot on his hand.

“Your ship’s A.I. is overloaded trying to keep that old tin can from falling apart,” Redbeard said. “Why are you still on it? We saw escape pods launch.”

“Evidently I wasn’t in one of them.”

“You didn’t bring enough? That’s not like you, Evangelos.”

“I did, but you shot it off, and the other one I have is damaged,” Evangelos answered. “It’s just me and Mara now.” They’d been around each other so long that Redbeard of course knew the name of his A.I. . “You’ve won one, pirate, enjoy it.”

Redbeard was quiet for a moment.

“Come on now. There’s still time to get out, we can pick you up in the damaged pod. This is no way to go.”

Evangelos snorted at that idea.

“I can’t remember asking for your opinion, _McGregor_.”

Edward McGregor had taken the name Redbeard from some pirate with a different colour of beard from ancient times on Earth, for they apparently shared the same first name. Lots of pirates went in for that homeplanet nostalgia; the bounty hunters, too. Evangelos himself had only visited Earth a handful of times on holiday. An alright place, but, with an atmosphere riddled with holes in the ozone layer, way too hot for his tastes, and most of it was covered by water, too. Great for people who enjoyed beaches, he supposed, and stories about pirates in old wooden boats.

This time, Redbeard did not raise to the bait of being called the name he’d stripped.

“So you’ll just strike the sails? I never took you for a coward. It’ll be too boring without you.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure eventually they’ll throw enough money at some of these bounty hunters that they’ll actually be good for something.”

Evangelos’ mouth was still open for another scathing comment when he heard a massive explosion behind him. He turned, but suddenly, there was only darkness.

-

When Evangelos woke, he found himself in a white room. Blinking sleep away, he saw that left and right of him stood heating benches covered in white sheets. He himself could feel the warmth of a medical bed flowing through him now. He could also feel that he had a cuff around his left wrist that kept him tied to the frame.

“There you are.”

He lifted his gaze. Sitting on a chair at the foot of his bed between a host of mismatched medical equipment was Redbeard, grinning at him.

“Rise and shine, darling.”

Evangelos gritted his teeth.

“What in the hell did you do now?”

“I’m a pirate. You think I can’t get on a burning ship and steal what I want?”

He flicked something at him. Evangelos frowned as it landed on his chest. It was a small data drive of some sort.

“What is that?”

“We jacked Mara from your ship’s hard drive. I know how long you two have worked together, so I figured you might not want her to go down with _Nines_.”

Evangelos closed his fist around the data drive, staring at his hand for a moment. He’d not exactly made peace with the fact that he would die when the canon hit his ship broadside, but he had accepted it. This was strange. While he had thought Redbeard might go fishing for a damaged evacuation pod, which was pretty easy all things considered, he had not expected Redbeard to go through so much trouble just to pick him up.

“So what am I here for? I’m done playing cat and mouse with you.”

“Done?” Redbeard asked. “After all these years? What changed your mind?”

The question sounded honest, at least.

“The trap I’m going to bring you into – you’ll spring it, anyway, because why not? Don’t tell me you don’t have the contacts. If some politician’s hound dog brought you there, they might make sure to keep you under lock and key, but for me?” He shook his head. His body ached, his skull hammered; the explosion must have gotten him good. “I’ve had enough of it. The third time I lock you up won’t be the one you finally go to trial. Only the ones too small to escape the law ever get held accountable. What’s the point?”

“So you finally understood your masters are no better than me. Well, you are pushing fifty, but better late than never...”

Redbeard’s tone told him he was still trying to provoke him, but Evangelos had nothing left with which to answer. The job he had once taken pride in, which had been his whole life, had been eroded from within by decisions he was too unimportant to take part in. Of course, he’d always known about the corruption in the police force, he’d known how many criminals got away, and he knew how many were killed by bounty hunters under dubious protection of the law, but when you were younger, you always imagined you could make a difference.

So what now? His ship was likely scrap by now, his crew would think him dead once they read the evacuation log after landing. He supposed he still had Mara, and in fact, looking at Redbeard woke a strange sort of comfortable familiarity. But an untethered A.I. and a man who had tried to kill him on half a hundred occasions were not the sort of pillars you could rebuild a life on, were they?

“You made your point,” Evangelos said, jaw set. “Now what? Are you going to put a bullet between my eyes?”

Redbeard got up and cocked his head.

“Now you should probably sleep and let the adhesives patch up the bones you broke. My doctortells me it was about half a dozen.”

With those words and an irreverent smile, Redbeard walked out the door.

-

“Tell your captain his starboard shields are overloading.”

The doctor, a pale, older woman with tattoos up her arms, glanced up from her small personal computer unit and eyed him critically.

“What?”

“I said, the starboard shields are overloading. It’s going to-”

“Captain,” she interrupted him, pressing a finger against her wrist-mounted comm unit controller. “Your guy is awake and talking and I’m not your messenger. He says something’s wrong with the ship.”

“-it on speaker. Ah, there we are. Thanks, Lynn.”

It always surprised Evangelos that pirate ships ran at all, with how lax the communication between the crew was. You’d think with so little respect shown to the captain, a mutiny would be at hand every other week.

“Your starboard shields are overloading,” he said, vexed already to have to repeat himself again.

He could hear the shields from where he laid in bed, faint but clear to him as someone who’d been on many a failing vessel, a rhythmical snap of emergency shutdown and immediately following hum of reconstruction every five minutes exactly, as the clock in the upper corner on the screen of the machine monitoring his vitals told him.

“I know, but my mechanic says the stabilisers and energy entry points are all fine, and we don’t have a real space ship engineer right now. My last one left to buy a farm with a stripper from Ganymede.” Redbeard sighed. “My mechanic will have to check the shield projectors when we’re in the next port, since they’re hull-mounted.”

“I doubt it has anything to do with the projectors,” Evangelos said. “It’s a system error. You should get it checked out before it short-circuits something. If one of the bounty hunters catches you without shields, they might not just take you in.”

“You think you can fix it?” Redbeard asked after a pause.

“Maybe. I’m not a space ship engineer.”

However, it was true he had been without engineers often enough because of the police’s chronic lack of staff, so he had basically taught himself the job over the decades. 

“Give me a moment,” Redbeard said.

The connection cut and the doctor, who had been standing by the door tapping her foot as her communicator was used as a relay, strutted out of the door, leaving Evangelos by himself. He let his eyes drift shut. Despite the quiet buzz and snapping crackle of the shields, he was ready to drift off to sleep again. His body was working overtime with the help of the medical adhesives and enhancers that knit his bones and muscles and skin back together. These scars would be nastier than the results of natural healing, but Evangelos had so many of them now that it barely made a difference.

The sliding door opened again. He expected the doctor, but Redbeard entered instead.

“Don’t fall asleep yet, you still need to fix my shields,” he said, as he sat down next to Evangelos’ bed with a tablet in hand, which he gave to him. After a moment of scanning the screen, Evangelos realised he had been handed unlocked access to the ship’s registry.

“You know I could fuck up your ship with this, don’t you?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“What makes you so sure of that?” Evangelos asked sourly. “I was willing to go down with _my_ ship.”

“Your empty ship, yes. I have crew on here. And in fact, I don’t even think you would kill _me_. You’re too honourable.” He grinned. “I remember when we fought around the Silver Worlds and you stopped your fire on me when I swerved into perfect way of your cannons to avoid a personnel transport vessel from one of the factories there.”

“Good behaviour should be encouraged,” Evangelos answered flatly, swiping his way through lines of code. He did remember that; he also remembered being impressed with Redbeard, for not many pirates would have cared enough to not just let the small personnel transport become collateral damage as it got crushed on their shields.

“And one time, you let me limp away because you saw a struggling civilian vessel about to be dragged into the atmosphere of a toxic planet.”

“These things are probably why I never got a promotion past captain,” Evangelos muttered. “But you also never damaged ships or outposts to distract me, even knowing I would let you go. Others have.”

Redbeard frowned.

“Yeah, the pirate who taught me the ropes liked that strategy, but I never did. Even if you just graze a civilian ship, you don’t know how strong its shields are, or if someone’s pulling something heavy off a shelf and gets their head crushed because of the tremor. The risk is too big.” He shrugged. “And it doesn’t work these days, anyway. Police stop to help, but the hounds will keep chasing you and leave the civilians stranded until they have nothing else to do, and by then it’s usually too late for the poor sods.”

It amused Evangelos that a pirate was more honest about the bounty hunters than even most of his colleagues would be. For the sake of the media and to sleep at night, most cops pretended that their anti-piracy departments weren’t being essentially replaced by criminals. 

His finger came to rest on the line he’d expected to see.

“Here’s your error,” he said, as he fixed the numbers with a few taps. “It’s a loop in a step of the survey protocol. If you access it manually, the shields go through all functions once to see if there’s any errors, including testing if they can withstand a supercharge. Your ship wanted to do that continuously. I took it out. Tell your mechanic to stop sleeping on the job.”

“How did you know how to do that?”

“I had the same problem on a troop freighter, ten years back, I think. Took me a night or two to figure out. Mara ran some checks that helped.”

Redbeard glanced at the small data drive that sat by the side of the bed, where Evangelos could always keep an eye on it.

“If I didn’t know that you’ve hacked that thing to such weird pieces it probably wouldn’t work would, I might put Mara into my ship. She’s a damn fine piece of technology. But then, I do like the Morrígan.”

The Morrígan was the name of the _Burning Comet_ ’s A.I., after some goddess that had been long put in the realm of myths even when humans had first left for the stars all those many hundreds of years ago. She’d been with the ship for longer than Redbeard, who had bought the vessel and the A.I. eight years ago from a man living in the Ferguson Colonies who apparently had liked fairy tales a bit too much.

“Does she still have ‘hiccups’ when collecting data in the captain’s cabin?” Evangelos asked, and in the same moment wondered how he even knew about that? They had been playing this game for so long, perhaps it was no surprise. Especially not with Redbeard, who had always loved hijacking every available com to mock and tease and sometimes just talk. He was definitely the kind of man who enjoyed his profession, and not for its brutality; who, Evangelos had sometimes thought, may have stayed on the straight and narrow if there had been another job suited to his bravado and childish sense of adventure in his formative years. However, he had gotten dealt the hand of the oppressive mining colonies at birth, and there was little glory and romance to be found there if you didn’t carve your way out.

Redbeard laughed.

“She does, and it’s definitely a feature, not a bug. It’s why I distribute what we loot in the mess hall. Her first captain didn’t want accountability of that sort… it’s annoying that I have to go into the hallway to give her commands, but it is what it is. A ship needs a bit of personality.”

“ _You_ would think that,” Evangelos said, rolling his eyes. “A ship needs to work.”

“Were you not the one sitting in the machine room saying goodbye to your A.I. when I found you?” Redbeard asked with a smug smile. “Don’t pretend you’re so pragmatic, my dear Evangelos.”

Evangelos scowled at him.

“I need to sleep,” he muttered, pushing the tablet back at him.

“Well, you’re right about that. Morrígan, dim the lights.”

“Night is falling,” said a deep woman’s voice as the room grew darker.

Evangelos threw Redbeard a look.

“Seriously?”

“I didn’t choose her speech packet,” Redbeard said and grinned. “And as I said: a ship needs a bit of personality.”

A ship and its captain, Evangelos thought as Redbeard had left. Perhaps it wasn’t so hard to understand why this crew wasn’t constantly gagging for mutiny, at least. Redbeard was a charming sort of criminal and not without his own code of honour – but a criminal nonetheless. Then again, the same was pretty much true for large swathes of the people Evangelos worked for and with.

He let his eyes drift shut again, happy to escape the swirling thoughts in his head for now.

-

When Evangelos woke, it was to the sound of footsteps thundering down the hall, and the grave voice of the Morrígan calling all “warriors” to their stations on the bridge.

There was a small comm link by the side of his bed, tuned into Redbeard’s and the doctor’s channels only. He flicked it over to the former.

“What’s going on?”

“The _Iron Fist_ is on our heels,” Redbeard said at the other end, after a brief moment of silence.

“That old pit-bull,” Evangelos muttered. The _Iron Fist_ ’s captain, Anna Kurkova (which was most probably not her real name nor even the first fake one she’d had), had been in the business of bounty hunting for political masters almost as long as the practice had been en vogue, and she’d never pretended to have greater morals than the highest bidder. Before those gigs, she’d clawed her way up to the top ranks of a mercenary company, and all her other years prior to that were mysteriously unaccounted for, buried alongside some bodies, as Evangelos suspected. Unsurprisingly, she was very good at her job, one of the few in the bounty hunting business who brought consistent results, though her list of kills was yards longer than that of her captures. People barely cared about such details, though. “Seems like I’m going to meet my appointed end, after all,” he added.

He heard machinery moving. The canon, he figured. From the way he remembered the _Comet_ ’s layout, it was mounted under the sick bay.

“Please, haven’t you lost against me enough times to know I have a few tricks up my sleeve? Pull up the rear shields!” he added, immediately, and louder, to someone else, before he lowered his voice again. “Although if you would like to come here and give your opinion, I could live with it. You’ve seen her from a different angle than me.”

“You cuffed me to the bed, remember?” Evangelos asked, rattling his chain.

“True. You didn’t complain, though,” Redbeard said, though a little of his usual bravado was missing, making the innuendo lacking. “I’ll send Lynn.”

The doctor came into the room at a brisk pace as usual only moments later.

“I have a gun,” she told him, as she reached for the cuffs. “Don’t try anything funny.”

Apparently, she was not as trusting as Redbeard. Evangelos could hardly blame her. He wouldn’t have taken off his own cuffs, either. But he also knew why Redbeard was doing it. He might be joking around, but he was too smart not to know that you didn’t want to be in Kurkova’s sights, and Evangelos had flown alongside bounty hunters sometimes on official appointments, meaning he could give him some insights. Redbeard was scared, and he should be.

His newly healed bones protested at the movement as he sat up stiffly and rubbed his wrist before he grabbed Mara and slid her into the pocket of his uniform.

It was an instinct not to leave her behind, but he thought in that moment of Mara’s several compartments and sub-functions. Theoretically, if he could find a terminal somewhere while everyone was busy, he could easily use her get an undetected call past the Morrígan, informing Kurkova that he was here and offering sabotage in exchange for her going easy on the ship and getting him off it.

Lynn pushed him out of the sick bay and engaged the lock behind them before racing down the hallway in the opposite direction to the bridge, doubtless on some mission of her own – he’d heard her talking quietly to her comm unit as he’d made his laborious way out of his bed. Evangelos was alone. It would have been so easy to put that plan into motion. There were probably terminals in the mess area and that would be deserted now.

But it would mean helping Kurkova, and she wouldn’t just have ignored a flagging civilian vessel to chase her target, she would have pointed her guns at one if it meant creating debris that would stop her prey.

Evangelos turned and limped towards the bridge.

-

“You’re not going to fight the _Iron Fist_ , are you?” Evangelos asked, when he stood close enough that his words would only be heard by Redbeard sitting in his captain’s chair, staring intently at the screen projections before him. When he heard his voice, Redbeard damn near jumped. 

“No,” he said quietly, after throwing a quick glance over his shoulder, “I’m not suicidal. And don’t worry, neither is my crew.”

It was good to know they were all realistic, then. One glory hound complaining about the captain’s cowardice could bring the whole morale right down in a firefight.

“So what are you shooting at? I heard the cannons going.”

“We had to keep them at a distance. The _Iron Fist_ just got an upgrade including some nasty short-range guns. Acquaintance of mine died that way a couple months back,” Redbeard said, thrumming his fingers on his armrest.

Evangelos glanced at the projections showing the relative distance between the _Iron Fist_ and the _Burning Comet_. For now they were out of range, but the _Iron Fist_ , massive beast of a ship that she was, was not nearly as lumbering as one would expect seeing her at anchor. She was outfitted with thrusters that could propel her forward by overclocking the energy core. No ship withstood that sort of pressure for long, but it was safe enough to do it for a few seconds – and they didn’t need longer to close up on them and shoot them to bits.

“We need to get to the next transit relay,” he said, and Redbeard nodded his head.

Transit relays allowed jumps at highest possible FTL speed. They could get to any star system with that in the blink of an eye, and there were many to choose from, too many for the _Iron Fist_ to try to follow by picking one on a whim.

“I know. Problem is, how are we going to do that before they catch up? I can’t overclock the core, it’ll wreck my system. Perhaps if we use the planets for cover, they stand close here… but the corridors between are too wide still. She can risk speeding up.”

Evangelos stared at the list of names in the system. He’d patrolled this part of the galaxy for decades, there had to be a way…

“Palmer Fifty,” Evangelos said, suddenly.

“What?”

“The planet, Palmer Fifty. It’s a corporate-owned factory world, I was stationed there a few years ago, since they had trouble with smugglers.” He swiped across the projections in front of Redbeard, until Palmer Fifty was in view. “The atmosphere is shot from the tests the corporations conducted there, so the workers and their families live in orbital stations around the planet and take ships planetside directly to the factories. Even Kurkova won’t risk smashing her ship into living quarters with fifty thousand people on them each. It wouldn’t make her or her masters look good.” He paused, staring intently at the picture. “Directly past Palmer Fifty is also the shortest way towards the relay. Even if Kurkova speeds towards it, she might not catch up in time.”

“Is _Comet_ slim enough to thread between the stations?” Redbeard asked, leaning forward to look closer at the planet, tapping its orbital stations to get some number on comparative distances.

“Well, that depends. Theoretically, yes. But you’re the pilot, aren’t you?” He knew Redbeard prided himself on his double role. “Are you good enough?”

Redbeard licked his lips and stared at the projection of Palmer Fifty for a long moment before a wolfish grin came to his face.

“It’s an insult you’re even asking.”

He settled his hands on the console.

One feature of battles in space that Evangelos had always found remarkable was how silent they could be. The bridge crew had fallen quiet around them as they discussed their strategy, expressions full of tense curiosity. This ship’s engine room was at the back, so even its hum was barely audible. In the past, back on the homeworld, there would have been deafening shots of guns and cannons, the screams and footsteps of sailors, and, back when ships still fought on the water, the noise of sea and wind. That kind of cacophony seemed only right for a moment that could mean life or death. Now, he only heard Redbeard taking a deep breath as he brought the ship on a sharp turn towards Palmer Fifty. Someone behind Evangelos took a sip of coffee and placed the plastic cup down with a click. A young man scratched his nail nervously along the top of his console.

Redbeard pulled them between the first two orbital stations, as neatly as a thread through the eye of a needle.

“What’s Kurkova doing?” Evangelos asked the woman sitting in front of a mass of projected screens at the main observation panel.

She gave him an odd look, but adjusted her screens to check. Evangelos realised that for a moment, he’d forgotten he wasn’t on his own bridge and that in fact he wasn’t just not the captain, but also a prisoner.

“They haven’t moved. They’re watching us.”

“It’s a good thing she can’t shoot at us with the stations around. Her long range canons aren’t precise enough to risk it. But she won’t be sitting still for long,” Redbeard said absent-mindedly. “She must know where we’re headed.”

“They are probably preparing to overclock the core now,” Evangelos said, frowning at the screens. Redbeard moved the ship as easily as a toy between the orbital stations and they were making good headway, putting the planet between themselves and Kurkova. Perhaps it would be enough. They had almost passed Palmer Fifty now.

The woman at the observation console let out a yelp.

“They jumped _right to the relay_!” she shouted.

“That can’t be…”

Evangelos stopped himself. It was, he could see it on her screen, too. A silent curse escaped him. Had Kurkova shackled a whole nuclear power plant to her core?! How was this even possible? He’d never in his life seen a ship of this size speed up like that.

“Which side?” Redbeard asked, gaze glued to his own screens.

“Port side of the relay,” the woman reported.

“Then we’re approaching from the other side.”

“There’s an asteroid field in the-”

“We’ve got working shields now.”

Grinning at Evangelos, Redbeard put the ship into the highest drive as he shot forward. Evangelos thought he could feel his heart plummeting into his stomach. This was madness. Flying between orbital stations had been dangerous, but the asteroid field he saw on the screens left basically no room for error at all.

Redbeard leaned back in his seat and dove in. Evangelos grabbed the back of his chair. He could see the rocks floating outside even through the window. They narrowly missed one, turned hard right, left; he heard the tell-tale whisper of shields engaging on impact and the _Burning Comet_ shuddered. His grip grew white-knuckled. He could see a great cluster of stones before them, absolutely impenetrable. Then, suddenly, a cloud of dust covered the window.

“The _Iron Fist_ is shooting at the field!” the man at the weapons station reported.

“They won’t hit us in here,” Redbeard said, narrowing his eyes at the screens.

That had been his plan, Evangelos realised. Use the asteroid field to protect them, take a smaller, calculated risk to avoid a big one. Just like he was hitting the small stones to avoid the ones that would incapacitate the ship.

However, even the smaller risk here was still enormous.

The _Burning Comet_ dipped under the cluster of stones. With another rattle of a collision, it passed out of the asteroid field towards the relay point.

“Incoming fire!” shouted the man at the weapons station.

“We’re keeping course!” Redbeard snapped back.

On the screens, Evangelos saw a canon shot miss their shields by inches. They collided with the energy field of the transit relay. Redbeard engaged the jump. The ship yanked hard left, and Evangelos flew sideways over Redbeard’s thighs, armrest digging painfully against the back of his legs. He saw several others topple off their chairs.

Then, suddenly, it was over. They were sitting in a different star system untold light years away, between a couple of planets with farming colonies, according to the screens.

Redbeard laughed. As the crew found back to its feet and seats, the sound was taken up, and rose with cheers all over the bridge. Evangelos was still gasping for air as Redbeard’s arm tightened around his shoulders and he was pulled into a short but passionate kiss.

When they parted, Redbeard looked about as surprised as Evangelos imagined he must himself. Redbeard managed to get his impression under control, though, and return to his winning grin.

“A pirate’s life is not so bad after all, is it?” he said. “Another heroic escape from the law, and a pretty man in my lap. What else can anyone ask for?”

Evangelos wished he could have given him a clever answer, but he was much too confused by the fact that the kiss had sent his heart leaping into his throat.

Probably just adrenaline.

-

“You’ll need a room other than the sick bay soon. Lynn is going to kick you out. She doesn’t like it when her patients linger.”

Evangelos looked up to where Redbeard was leaning in the open doorway. After their jump, Evangelos had made his way off the bridge, red-faced and feeling all of eighteen for a moment. You’d think a man like him would know better than to swoon over a pirate. When he’d first noticed that regrettable tendency towards Redbeard fifteen years ago, he had shut these feelings away decisively, or so he’d thought. But Redbeard seemed to have gotten his fingers into that locked chest as well.

“Were you thinking about your own quarters?” Evangelos gave back, raising a brow.

Redbeard snorted.

“Straight to the point as usual. I always liked that about you.” He leaned his head to the side. “But if you hadn’t fixed my shields, we probably wouldn’t have made it through the asteroid field. I think I had good reason to kiss you.”

“Is that how you generally thank your crew for their work? No wonder they’re so loyal.”

“No. Just how I wouldn’t risk getting crushed in the burning debris of a failing ship to save just any man.”

Evangelos took a long look at him.

“It figures that someone like you would want the man chasing them. Doomed romance. Just like in those old homeworld stories you love.”

“Well, you didn’t push me off when I kissed you, did you? Doesn’t seem so doomed now.”

That was true, too. Just like it was true that he’d said goodbye to Mara, as Redbeard had pointed out. It was easier to pretend no flicker of romance was left over when you lived a life that really shouldn’t invite such ideas. And yet, hadn’t he often smiled knowing there was another chance to chase Redbeard about again?

“You do wake the worst in me.” He rubbed a hand over his face and got up from the bed. “But I’ve almost died twice in the last two days. I’m beyond talking.”

“Then what do you want to do?”

“Go to your quarters,” Evangelos said, grasping Redbeard’s wrist as he passed him by.

Now Redbeard grinned that boyish grin again, which still looked the same as it always had, even now that his face was lined, too, and there were some grey flecks in his titular beard. They had waited long for this.

-

“I remember when you stole that painting,” Evangelos said, as he stepped into Redbeard’s quarters. “And that tapestry.”

“But they work with the room, don’t they?” Redbeard winked as he placed his hand between Evangelos’ shoulder blades. “And what a chase we had around Venus when I got the tapestry! I didn’t sleep for forty hours. You just wouldn’t let go.”

When he led him into the room, Evangelos wondered how many others of the baubles and decorations here were stolen. Probably most of them. Redbeard didn’t collect these things to show off his wealth, wouldn’t have presented anything to a visitor he had earned simply by buying it. He needed a tale to tell to each object.

“If base hadn’t called me in that day to deal with the Roybert Prison Station break-out, I would have caught you, too.”

Redbeard chuckled and pulled him in for another kiss. Evangelos leaned closer. After so many years of seeing him mostly on screens, it was almost surreal to have Redbeard chest to chest, in his arms. It felt good. It had been ages since he’d been so close to anyone. His job had eaten away the rest of his life, slowly but surely, until all that remained were acquaintances and colleagues. Now he remembered with a sudden rush the pleasure of another human being’s touch, one he was familiar with, through whatever strange circumstances.

“Maybe,” Redbeard allowed. “But I’m a pretty great pilot.”

Evangelos rolled his eyes and tried not to smile.

“And a pretty reckless one,” he murmured, cardings his hand through Redbeard’s hair and pulling him into the kiss again.

They moved slowly towards the bed, not letting go off each other. Redbeard’s mouth moved along his throat, his beard dragging roughly against Evangelos’ skin. However, he stopped just as they had arrived at the excessively broad bed that dominated the back of the living area.

“How are your bones feeling? Lynn is going to kill me if I give you another fracture.”

“I’d say they will hold up, but not if you treat your lovers like you treat your ship. I don’t have shields.”

“Oh, I’m nothing if not a gentleman.”

He smirked, but when he hauled Evangelos down onto the bed, he did make sure the was a soft landing, keeping his arms tight around him. Evangelos let his head roll back, allowing himself to just enjoy the feeling of Redbeard working on him for a moment, clearly eager to please, his hands and mouth restless on Evangelos’ body. However, the urge to touch him soon became too strong. Those thoughts long pushed away now came racing in like a wild river that had finally broken its dam. Lost to the broken system he had so long attempted to protect while trying to ignore the fact that all he was truly upholding was a hollow shell, Evangelos felt free for the first time in years, and with that freedom came the admission that he had always quite liked seeing that insolent grin on his screens.

Redbeard’s leather jacket was soft against Evangelos’ fingers. He pulled it off with the black pullover and dark trousers of synthetic denim. There was no dress code on a pirate ship, but Evangelos himself was still wearing what the doctor had left him of his standard uniform, a white dress shirt and simple blue trousers. He wondered briefly what had happened to the uniform jacket, to which he had always dutifully pinned the medals he’d won when ceremony demanded it of him; but the medals were likely melted into a lump of space ship parts now, and he’d never liked the seat of the stiff jacket, anyway.

Evangelos pushed Redbeard off to shed the rest of his police uniform onto a plush, expensive-looking Persian carpet Redbeard had surely also stolen. Glancing up, he saw Redbeard’s body, muscular despite nearing the age of forty himself now, covered in the ugly tell-tale red marks left by wounds healed through medical adhesives, as well as burn marks from energy guns. There was a mass of tattoos, too, a few cut apart by scars, some still recognisable, a fair share well done, others barely more than scribbles.

“I’m surprised the skull and crossbones on your chest is so small. I figured you would have tattooed it over your whole back,” he said, tapping the skull under Redbeard’s collar bones on the forehead. Redbeard grinned and turned.

“That canvas was taken,” he said.

Huge bat wings covered his back. They also attempted to cover old, white, long marks. Lashing scars, Evangelos figured. Not an uncommon thing to find on a man who’d been born on a mining planet under the control of Benron Industries. The harsh laws of that government-company were infamous.

“Well, I’ll be happy to take a longer look at those wings eventually while I watch you from behind...”

Redbeard laughed.

“My quarters are open to you,” he purred. “You know not even the Morrígan spies on us here.”

The promise of a repeat, of perhaps permanence hid behind the flirting, made Evangelos’ heart beat faster, though he could not say if it was for excitement or fear of the fact that he was stupid enough to even consider it.

But that was not for now to think about. Now, he didn’t want to think at all.

He pushed against him and Redbeard let himself be moved after some token, mirthful resistance, nipping at Evangelos’ jaw. His cock was already fully hard, standing to an impressive size, and Evangelos grabbed it firmly in his fist. Redbeard hissed.

“Not one for teasing, are you?”

“That was always your job.”

He ducked his head and wrapped his lips around Redbeard’s cock, wondering briefly if he should ask him for a condom, since, likely being considered killed in action by his crew and employer, he had no immediate access to money for the medicine cocktail that protected one from just about any regular disease one could catch this or another way. However, he had a feeling that Redbeard would allow Lynn to feed him the monthly dose – if Evangelos stayed with him.

Perhaps with that in the back of his mind, he did not ask, but applied himself to his task instead with as much zeal as he approached all he did in earnest. 

Above him, he heard Redbeard struggling to swallow a groan and it gave him no small amount of satisfaction. He felt a hand on the back of his head, urging him on, but it was a gentle pressure, more encouragement than force. Apparently, Redbeard was as worried about his bones as he’d said – or about Evangelos’ good opinion.

Evangelos swallowed him down until his nose was buried in curly red hair, dropping his hand to Redbeard’s balls and holding them firmly, just on the edge of pain. Redbeard shivered, and Evangelos squeezed briefly before rubbing his fingerpad across Redbeard’s hole, feeling him squirm under him.

As tempting as it was, Evangelos realised that right now he would not have the patience to prepare Redbeard as he would want to do, too greedy to feel him closer, and he knew his own limits better. Pulling off his cock, he enjoyed the look of severe disappointment on Redbeard’s face he saw when glancing upwards.

“I hope you keep lube around here somewhere. I’m going to ride you,” he told him.

“Is that an order from the police?” Redbeard joked, sitting up with eagerness to reach beside his bed into a drawer.

“Since you never listened to me when I had a badge, no. It’s an order from me.”

“Fair enough,” Redbeard allowed, chuckling, and grabbed Evangelos’ shoulders, yanking him forward when he let himself fall back, stretching out on the bed. He put lube from a bottle into his own hand and spread it on his cock, fisting himself lazily with one hand as he gave Evangelos an expectant grin.

Sitting there straddling his thighs, Evangelos could not help but smile. Looking self-satisfied like a lazy cat bedded on an inordinate amount of impractical pillows – half where already spilled on the floor from the _Burning Comet_ ’s collision with the relay –, with that stolen ancient tapestry covered in a thousand blue, ornamental swirls approximating wild waters on the wall behind him, Redbeard really could have been the hedonistic pirate of old he playfully styled himself as. And Evangelos? He was a castaway, or maybe just a piece of loot. But right now, he did not mind in the slightest.

Evangelos lifted his hips and positioned himself. It may have been too long since he had been with a man, but he’d had a couple of toys to use, thinking of faceless, nameless men while he did – though for some years now he’d had to keep their faces forcefully blank, and yet they still often turned into redheads. He relaxed to let Redbeard in, feeling him buck under him like an unruly horse, but Evangelos held to the slow pace because he’d always been the more methodical one of them, perhaps not as full of quick ideas and flourishes, but always on track. It could drive Redbeard to distraction once more here.

When he had buried Redbeard’s cock most of the way inside, Evangelos watched his lover, whose face was tight with teetering self-control, flushed from the hairline down to the chest. He kept still for a long moment, torture to himself and Redbeard, before he finally released them both and moved his hips.

Redbeard’s blunt nails dug into his sides. For a moment, their rhythms clashed, both too stubborn to fit; but then – Evangelos could not tell whether he was brought to heel or Redbeard acquiesced, but their bodies fell together on the same beats, irresistible and brutal as waves in a storm. He could have grabbed on to the headrest to steady himself, but he had no interest in that. Instead, he took hold of Redbeard’s shoulders, giving himself to that feeling.

He came first, though Redbeard had barely done more than pumped his cock a few times. Redbeard held him down, fucked him as Evangelos thrust his tongue into his open, panting mouth, and he came pressing Evangelos down on his cock.

They laid together, Redbeard on the bed and Evangelos on Redbeard, silence embracing them. Eventually, Evangelos rolled off of him to give Redbeard a chance to properly catch his breath. Redbeard brushed his hand through Evangelos’ dark head of curls.

“I’ll take a shower. Want to go after me?”

Evangelos nodded his head. Redbeard disappeared into a small, white cubicle of a room through a door. After a moment of drowsy, comforting quiet of mind, Evangelos realised he should ask him where he was supposed to go now that the doctor wouldn’t want him back in the sick bay and they were done fucking. But before he could, his eyes fell shut. He woke hours later, judging by the clock on the nightstand, to Redbeard’s arm draped around his hip. Perhaps the question was answered for now, at least.

-

“The endless night is still full of secrets.”

“I’m sorry,” Mara said patiently, “I don’t understand.”

Evangelos frowned up at the ceiling, where the Morrígan’s speaker was set. Redbeard has asked him if he could take a look at whether the ship system had any other problems they hadn’t caught as of yet, and it wasn’t like Evangelos had anything better to do. So he sat here in a small room in engineering over the terminal on which he had uploaded Mara as a testing tool.

“I think she means that the coordinates cannot be calculated exactly at that distance,” he told his A.I. .

“I will incooperate that into the data set.”

“It’s going well, it seems.”

Evangelos turned to find Redbeard walking in, sporting his wolfish grin.

“Yes, great. Mara can barely interact with the Morrígan. No wonder your engineer left.”

“I heard she’s hard to do maintenance on.”

Evangelos shrugged his shoulders.

“Just oblique and difficult to access systematically because of some weird firewalls hardwired into this ship, but I can’t scroll through every line of code by hand. If you’d allow me to temporarily shackle Mara and the Morrígan, I could parse her through Mara,” he said. “And then Mara would also understand the Morrígan, as she’d work with her data output, not with that insane speech packet.” He gestured at the speaker. “It would allow me to do some side-by-side comparisons to see where both of them could be improved as well.”

“Would we have to land for that?”

“No. I’ll do it section by section and quarantine them while I work on them. Two A.I.s can run simultaneously if there’s enough random-access memory and this ship has plenty. The _Comet_ would probably work better than it does right now once I’ve properly introduced them to each other.”

Evangelos made a thoughtful humming noise.

“I really shouldn’t let you go again, should I? You’re probably not going to run off to a farming colony with a stripper, either.”

For a moment, Evangelos’ hands stilled over the virtual keyboard.

“Are you going to add me to that collection in your room?”

“You’re just asking for a dumb booty joke now.”

Evangelos rolled his eyes.

“Spare me.” He paused, running his eyes over the terminal’s screens again. “Why did you save me, anyway? I mean, why did you really?” he asked, without looking at Redbeard.

“Honestly? I didn’t think it through. I just didn’t want you to die.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Evangelos seized Redbeard up. He looked honest enough. He wasn’t even grinning for once.

“You’re not actually a prisoner, I just had you cuffed in case you were concussed and confused. I know you don’t shoot random medical personnel.” Redbeard shrugged. “If you want to, I’ll let you out on the next port. Your ship’s escape pods will have landed on Glaukos and your people have probably just reported you MIA for now. You can still go back.”

There was reluctance in his voice, even as the way he glanced off at his fingernails seemed designed to make him seem uncaring.

“I guess I could,” Evangelos said, taking a deep breath. “But don’t stop on my behalf.”

Redbeard smiled. Evangelos glanced back at the screen.

“Morrígan, Mara, are you ready for me to establish a connection?”

“The Morrígan always welcomes new faces in her domain, if they bear flowers, not swords. I would love to meet fair Mara.”

“I’m... also ready, Captain Gianopoulos,” Mara said, somewhat uncertain apparently about the fact whether she was actually agreeing with the other A.I. .

“I’m not the captain now, Mara,” Evangelos said. “That’s Edward McGregor over there.”

“I see. Hello, Captain McGregor.”

“The name is Redbeard, Mara,” Redbeard said, thwacking Evangelos gently on the back of the head. “Don’t teach them both wrong now. I should have known there was some danger in letting you put your hands on my ship.”

“Should have kept an engineer on board and you might not need me,” Evangelos said, raising a brow.

“Oh, I think I may always have a need of you here, even if I had five engineers.”

When Redbeard’s hand rested on the back of his neck, Evangelos felt happiness like a fluttering bird in his chest. He made no pretensions to himself despite of it, of course. Redbeard was still a criminal, even if not one of the worse ones Evangelos had met. But Evangelos had killed, and followed orders when he knew better, and done a hundred thousand things that left him with a black and cold heart, too. They were not so different as he used to pretend.

Now that he planned to shackle their A.I.s, he’d be busy here for a good fortnight, anyway, no going around that, because it wasn’t like he would leave Mara. He really doubted he would get off at the next port. Or the one after that.

In fact, as long as Redbeard had need of him still, he doubted he would leave. And if that was always the case as Redbeard claimed, well, perhaps Evangelos could live with that.


End file.
